US general who opened Guantanamo prison says shut it down

The US general who opened the notorious US-run Guantanamo prison says it was a mistake and it should be shut down because the prison complex “validates every negative perception of the United States.”

“In retrospect, the entire detention and interrogation strategy was wrong,” Marine Major General Michael Lehnert wrote in the Detroit Free Press on Thursday.

Lehnert was the first commander of the task force that opened the prison complex at the Guantanamo Bay US Naval Base in Cuba under the presidency of George W. Bush in January 2002 and is now retired from the US military.

He wrote about the reason why the United States opened the prison in the first place, saying “we were legitimately angry and frightened” by the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001 and thought the captives sent there would provide “a treasure trove of information and intelligence.”

However, shortly after the detention camp was opened, he realized that most of the prisoners should not have been sent there at all because there was insufficient evidence to link them to war crimes.

“We squandered the goodwill of the world after we were attacked by our actions in Guantanamo, both in terms of detention and torture,” Lehnert wrote.

Lawmakers in US Congress are now reviewing a defense bill that would give President Barack Obama flexibility to repatriate or resettle Guantanamo detainees but, according to Lehnert, the proposal contains an “unwise and unnecessary ban” on transferring the prisoners to the US.

“Still, this is a step forward toward closing our nation’s most notorious prison – a prison that should never have been opened,” he wrote.

Shutting down Guantanamo was a central theme of US President Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008.

The Guantanamo prison in southeastern Cuba holds over 160 men seized during the US military’s “counter-terrorism” operations. Most of the prisoners have been held without charge or trial for more than a decade.